


Riddled with Monuments

by cherrylng



Category: Coldplay (Band), Muse (Band)
Genre: Antarctica, Blucifer the Blue Horse statue, Drones Era, Established Relationship, Humor, M/M, Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-05
Updated: 2018-05-05
Packaged: 2019-05-02 14:26:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,654
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14546688
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cherrylng/pseuds/cherrylng
Summary: “Video games like to have riddles and puzzles to have you find the location to get a nice reward. Why not have one in real life for you? You can go to places that you never thought to visit before.”





	Riddled with Monuments

**Author's Note:**

> All of the places mentioned are real. And some are just as interesting as it is infamous. Enjoy and comment!
> 
> Music: Does Your Mother Know - ABBA

“Here you go, sir. Your Earl Grey tea with a plate of lemon slices for you to add in.”  
  
“Thank you,” Matt says to the waitress as she sets up a pot of tea, a small plate of lemon slices, a teaspoon, and a cup and dish onto the table.  
  
Matt is at the tearoom that Corvo owns, waiting for his friend to appear to have the afternoon tea that he had been invited over for. He didn’t have to wait long. The man himself only appears ten minutes later after his tea is served, leaving the office with the shop’s manager, their talks of the status of the tearoom concluded.  
  
When one looks at Corvo, the last thing that most people would expect of someone with a rockstar image like him is to own is a quaint, modest, but fairly popular tearoom. He is the majority shareholder of the shop but leaves the day to day administration to a competent manager and regularly visits the place to check up on business and, of course, for tea.  
  
The popularity of Corvo’s tearoom, named The Rook’s Rest, is not due to him owning the tearoom, although it played in its part when the media helpfully advertises that fact. Rather, it lies in the huge variety of high quality tea leaves that it possess and the good food served in its premise that attracts customers to its door.   
  
“Sorry if you have waited long for me,” Corvo says once he’s seated himself next to Matt and has ordered the afternoon tea set for them.  
  
“It’s alright, wasn’t that long of a wait. What were you discussing about in the office?”  
  
“Not much. Just the current stock of supplies that we have in storage and the upcoming introduction of seasonal menus and drinks.”  
  
The conversation continues as the food gets served as they catch up with things that have happened and talk about any topic that caught their focus on. For Matt, it is the trouble of finding good places to go for holidays with his boyfriend, Chris. For Corvo, that topic is mostly about video games.  
  
After Corvo sat through Matt talking about his own topic of wanting to go somewhere for a holiday but can’t decide where to go, Matt is listening to Corvo criticising on how video games with an open landscape setting tend to put a lot of side quests and puzzles that distracts him far too much away from the main storyline.  
  
“I mean, it’s sort of a lazy gameplay strategy to put sidequests to throw the player off into going to the middle of nowhere in a huge landscape just to find buried treasure in games,” Corvo says, chomping down on a smoked salmon sandwich as he releases his criticism. “Sure, you get rare loot out of it and see the effort that they put into the landscape, but sometimes you gotta ask yourself as a player if it was worth it.”  
  
“Yeah, I do get where you’re going with that. Although, sometimes those puzzles do lead to exactly where you need to go.”  
  
“While you have a point, there’s gotta be a balance between too few and too many. Like having more puzzles than there are side quests, which are already more than the main quests, that’s when there’s too many,”  
  
“Makes me think that if I were given a quest like that, it’s more than a good excuse for me to go there, take my time, and treat it like a holiday.”  
  
Corvo nods, taking a break from talking by drinking his tea before his eyes widened in realisation and he sits up straighter. Something sparkled behind Corvo’s eyes as he grins at Matt.  
  
“I have an idea, if you’re willing to hear me out,” he says.  
  
“What is it?” Usually when Corvo has an idea for his friends, it’s either a good idea or an idea to be wary of.  
  
“Video games like to have riddles and puzzles to have you find the location to get a nice reward. Why not have one in real life for you? Aside from the lack of physical rewards, you can go to places that you never thought to visit before. We should make one so that each of us gets to go to somewhere we never thought about going.”  
  
“Where should I go to even if you make those puzzles? I’m not going into this game of yours if it’s sending me to places like the Australian Outback or some death zones.”  
  
“How about monuments and huge sculptures?” Corvo suggests. “It’ll be easy to find, safe from dangerous places, and to take pictures of to be sure that you went there.”   
  
It doesn’t sound so bad of an idea when Matt thinks about it. Just be told to go where to go to find that one location and something else after it’s dealt with.   
  
“How about this for a proposal? For every five puzzles that I give to you and you’ve done the challenges, you give me only one in return and I’ll go to wherever you want me to go from the riddle.”  
  
“Wait, why one riddle for every five that you’re going to make for me?” Matt asks.  
  
“Because you and I know that you suck at creating riddles.”  
  
“Fuck you, Corvo,” Matt says, finding that surprisingly hurtful.  
  
“And I am busy in the following months to do the same amount as I’m proposing for you. Plus, since you suck at making new riddles on the fly,” Corvo continues, “what I’m offering is actually pretty fair. You can figure out a good place to have me go to along the way. I’ll even make the puzzles easy for you to figure out so long as you get there and take a picture to prove that you were there.”  
  
“No way,” Matt adamantly refuses. Who knows where Corvo will send him or how hard those riddles will be if he had accepted right away.  
  
Unfortunately for Matt, Corvo is not one to back down and has an ace up his sleeves.  
  
“How about to sweeten the deal, I give you a bottle of Pétrus bordeaux as a reward if you do all my puzzles?”  
  
Hearing that, Matt perks up at first before he looks at Corvo with a more serious face. The name of that brand is pretty well known in itself from its history and quality of wine.  
  
“What year?”  
  
“1990,” Corvo answers.  
  
The price of that bottle of wine would cost thousands of pounds to buy it, and only gets more expensive as it goes.  
  
“You really want me to play this game, don’t you?”  
  
“The wine waiting at the end and being able to get me to play one riddle of yours in return isn’t enough of an incentive?” Corvo gives a lopsided grin. Matt knows that Corvo knows that when it comes to challenges that Matt believes that he can do it, he would do it, especially now that there is something good at the end as a reward.  
  
In the end, the chance to have a rare bottle of wine and getting to go on short term holidays is a good enough incentive for Matt.  
  
“Fine then, I agree to play with your riddles,” Matt says, before he adds the following line. “So long as it is possible within my limitations.”  
  
“So long as it is possible within your limitations,” Corvo repeats his words in agreement.   
  
They shook hands to seal the deal. And when Matt left the tearoom, he still isn’t sure whether he will regret it or not.  
  
\-----  
  
The first riddle that Corvo sends to him is via email.  
  
 _In the Swiss Alps under the shade of the trees and rocks, lies a lion resting in a quarry. The lion is lying atop of broken weapons and shields, in its dying moment forever weeping for its loss._  
  
It was pretty easy for Matt to figure out that he doesn’t have to think too hard on what that place is by just Googling what the dying lion is and which part of Switzerland that it is located. Using Google and the Internet in general is not against the rules, just that he has to go to the location and take a picture to confirm that he had done the challenge.   
  
After that, Matt is booking a flight route to Lucerne, Switzerland. Right as he is about to contemplate whether or not to click to confirm and make a transaction right away, Chris is home.  
  
“Hello, darling,” Chris greets Matt by going over to him and pecking a kiss to his lips.  
  
“Hello to you too, love,” Matt greets back.  
  
“What’s this you’re doing here?” Chris asks, taking a look at his laptop. “You’re booking a flight? Where are you going?”  
  
“Oh, just to Switzerland for the weekend. Nothing big,” Matt says casually, keeping the holiday idea quiet until he can spring it on Chris.  
  
“Is it a meeting with a producer that lives there?”  
  
“No.”  
  
“For a concert that you’re invited to perform?”  
  
“Not really…” Matt starts to grin.  
  
“Then what are you actually going there for?” Chris finally asks, confused.  
  
Matt explains the game that Corvo has put him into. The more Chris hears it, the more he appears interested by it. Right as Matt is about to ask Chris if he wants to go too, Chris is ahead of him for that one.  
  
“I’ve never been to that part Switzerland before. Can I go as well?” Chris asks eagerly.  
  
“I wouldn’t mind. But are you free around the time that I’m going?”  
  
“Yeah, and I can help you solve the puzzles too. We can work together!”  
  
It is times like these that it reminds Matt of why he loves his boyfriend so much.  
  
And so Matt books for flight tickets for two to Lucerne, Switzerland for the upcoming Friday.  
  
They are going to be there for only a few days at most over the weekend, and yet Chris is already acting like an excited tourist that has rarely ever travelled out of his country when they arrived at Switzerland. After checking into the hotel that Matt had booked online, putting their suitcases in their room, they are off to the monument via taxi.  
  
“It’s fairly well known monument. It’s even listed in the tourist brochures from the hotel,” Chris says while the taxi takes them to their destination. “Do you think that we can visit other places after we go to the lion monument?”  
  
“Sure,” Matt replies. He’s mostly agreeing to it because up to the following days before the trip, he has not been exactly thinking about what to do in Lucerne. With his first time playing an actual real life puzzle/location finding game, the details were mostly down to making sure that he can get there.  
  
Finally, the taxi brings them to a park and they get to the monument by foot.  
  
“It looks bigger than I thought,” is the first thing that Matt says when he sees the lion monument.  
  
The artist commissioned to create the monument is impressive in his skills to have given the lion a human emotion that is recognisable as grief, giving more impact to what the price of big events in history have costed to people throughout every generation.   
  
“Time to take a picture then,” Matt says.  
  
“Do we do it like a selfie or just take a picture of the monument itself?”  
  
“A selfie might be better. That way, Corvo won’t think that we didn’t come here.”  
  
A few selfies and some pictures later, Matt pocketed his phone.  
  
“Those are going to Instagram later,” Matt says. “So… what do we do next?”  
  
“I’m kind of starving,” Chris says, patting his tummy. “Should we find someplace to eat?”  
  
Now that he has taken a picture, Matt finds that he doesn’t have much else to do. He had given himself ample time in order to make sure that he has time to find the location. Now he has accomplished that, and he still has two days before the scheduled flight back to Britain. He might as well follow after Chris and take in the sights and sounds of the city of Lucerne then.  
  
And some food first when his stomach, too, growled in hunger.  
  
\-----  
  
 _A demonic horse, with red eyes and body coloured in blue, makes Denver its home. Its creator paid the price of having it come to existence, with their own soul in return._  
  
“That is one terrifying looking horse statue,” Chris commented, looking up at said statue.  
  
It was good timing that when they arrived at Denver, Colorado, that it was the early evening. The statue is located right outside of Denver International Airport, which meant that they didn’t waste much time to find it. A perfect timing to see the Blue Mustang in all its amazing, terrifying glory as the red lights installed as its eyes shine brightly.  
  
“I can see why the locals named it Blucifer,” Matt says, taking his phone out while looking at the horse statue with wariness as though it really could turn alive to charge at them at any given moment.  
  
“You think maybe the blue demon horse statue is cursed?” Chris asks.  
  
“Well, according to Wikipedia, it did killed the artist who made it.”  
  
Before Matt posts the picture on Instagram, he makes sure that the he picks the right filter to make the horse sculpture more terrifying in the photo. As scary as the horse statue looks, he sort of likes it.  
  
“So now that we’ve dealt with Blucifer the demon horse statue without wasting our time finding it, what do we do in Denver, Colorado for the next forty-eight hours?”  
  
“We can do a 48-hour trip in Denver like Richard Ayoade does in that TV show of his,” Chris pulls his phone out. “I even picked up a guide online for this trip.”  
  
“This guide just mostly consists of visiting museums and parks and shopping,” Matt points out after giving a skim read through the guide.  
  
“Maybe we can skip some of those listed in the guide and find more interesting places to visit? How does visiting a brewery sound?”  
  
Matt grins.  
  
“Now I like the sound of that.”  
  
\-----  
  
 _Stone lions enjoy making France its home. One lion defiantly faces where Prussia once was, before they protested to have it face the other way._  
  
At this point, playing by the third round, Matt is starting to wonder if covering five riddles is a tad bit too much for him. To be in London or California and then the next riddle arrives via email, and the next thing you know, you have to pack up and prepare for a trip. At least Corvo hasn’t decided to send them off somewhere far away or hard to reach. Yet.  
  
“This monument is special in its own right,” Matt starts, looking up at the statue. “Seeing that it was made by the designer of the Statue of Liberty is a start.”  
  
“Mmhmm,” Chris nods in agreement. By now, it’s a mainstay to have Chris to come with him on these short trips. Matt couldn’t imagine not having him around when these monument searches come up.  
  
“It’s one thing that the French were rivals and enemies with us Brits. It’s another thing entirely to see how much more they hated the Prussians.”  
  
“The Prussians were more of a national threat to France than us Brits were at that time.”  
  
“Can you imagine having to move the statue around to make it face away from where Prussia was after being told that the Germans don’t like that political statement of their defeat? That statue must weigh in tonnes. Even if they have made it in blocks, it’s still really heavy.”  
  
“Is that your whole comment?” Chris asks, after waiting for what else Matt is going to say.  
  
“Yeah, I’m done with my monologue,” Matt puts his act down and pulls out his phone. “Pictures first before we go to the restaurant.”  
  
Chris can only grin as he approaches to Matt to take a photo with the monument.  
  
The good thing about Corvo picking the Lion of Belfort as the next monument to find is that he and Chris had found a one-star Michelin restaurant of Le Pot D'etain in the small town of Belfort, and time away from home and work to spend time with each other.  
  
As much as Matt is wishing to complain that solving five riddles and finding the locations is too much, he’s not going to when it does as Corvo have promised by giving him and his boyfriend these small holiday getaways from time to time.  
  
\-----  
  
 _Love! Love is in air! The City of Lights is unafraid to declare ‘I love you’ in so many ways to be seen on a wall!_  
  
The riddle came by unusually fast. Corvo had emailed the riddle to Matt in just half an hour after he had posted the pictures of the last monument they went to while he and Chris were still in Belfort. It took weeks for the second and third riddles to be sent to Matt.  
  
It was sudden, but it had given them some ample time to get on a train to Paris. The monument that he is seeing is for once, not a statue, but rather a mural on a wall located in a garden square at Place des Abbesses in Montmartre, Paris.   
  
The mural itself features the theme of love. Written on it are around two hundred and fifty languages in which to say ‘I love you’. The red splashes on the wall symbolise parts of a broken heart, symbolizing the human race which has been torn apart and which the wall tries to bring back together.  
  
Chris is getting Matt to laugh at the various ways he is saying ‘I love you’ in different languages, no doubt butchering several of them from his attempts. And it is working. Nonetheless, it is touching to hear the many different ways for Chris to declare his love to Matt.  
  
“It’s a good thing that we’re still in France when Corvo sent us the next puzzle, isn’t it?” Chris looks at Matt with a smile after pictures were taken with the mural.  
  
“No, this is too easy.”  
  
“What do you mean?” Chris looks at him, still smiling but showing confusion.  
  
“The riddle was shorter than usual and has more than enough hints that I could solve it in minutes,” Matt explains as he turns much more serious. “This one is too easy to figure out and just right after we went for the Lion sculpture in Belfort. Corvo wouldn’t have made this an easy one for me to do. Not unless someone had altered it, so...”  
  
Matt’s face turns stony when he looks at Chris.  
  
“Did you have anything to do with it to have made this one easy for me?”  
  
“No, I didn’t,” Chris says a little too fast.  
  
“Chris, what did he asked in return?”  
  
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Chris says, his eyes looking away from Matt.  
  
Matt keeps staring at him and crosses his arms to his chest.  
  
“...He asked me to buy him a leg of Bayonne ham,” Chris sighs, giving in.  
  
“Well, it’s already been done, might as well fulfill that end of the deal,” Matt pats Chris’ shoulder to assure that he isn’t upset at him. “But so long as he’s going to pay us back for buying him French ham.”  
  
“He promised to do that when I called him,” Chris reassures. “I’m sorry for tampering into this game of yours with Corvo. I only wanted to extend our holiday in France and enjoy it a bit longer.”  
  
“It’s okay, love,” Matt chuckles, pulling Chris in for a kiss. “I already suspected it when I saw you packed some extra clothes into your bag that included some of my clothes.”  
  
\-----  
  
The last riddle that Corvo sends to Matt is surprising in that it doesn’t require him to get on an airplane and go to another country.  
  
 _In Wales, there lies a bridge first built by the Devil. The Devil was not a good builder, so a second bridge is built atop the first, before it is finally crowned with a third made of iron._  
  
It was weird to hear, let alone see the pictures, of a structure consisting of three bridges stacked on top of each other. But then again, it exists to have Corvo find it and create the riddle. And it is in Wales.  
  
However, it has piqued Matt’s interest to really go and see it for real. Plus, this is the last riddle to finish, so he might as well complete it.  
  
This time, knowing what is ahead of them, Chris and Matt decide to take the scenic route. Upon arrival of Aberystwyth by train, they got on a Vale of Rheidol Railway train, considered as a heritage railway, from the University town down to the village of Devil’s Bridge.   
  
Of course, as it tends to happen when they are out, they get their pictures taken by fans who noticed their presence in Aberystwyth. A few pictures taken and autographs given later, they had to tell them that they must leave soon in order to catch up with the train.  
  
“I swear that Corvo has just been getting me to go to places to find weird stuff waiting for us there this whole time,” Matt says, after finding empty seats for himself and Chris in one of the windowless carriages.  
  
“Each one you solved does bring us to a nice place to visit and find it,” Chris says. “And they’re not weird, they’re special in how each came to be found by Corvo to have us go to for a weekend trip.”  
  
“Fair point,” Matt concedes.  
  
The windowless carriages allows the breeze from the outside to blow on their faces, admiring the scenery as the steam train chugs its way to their destination, with stations and halts along the railway. There’s a feeling of nostalgia for the two of them from the experience of riding this train alone.  
  
“Hey, Matt?” Chris calls out while the train takes a brief stop in Nantyronen railway station to take on water.  
  
“Hmm?”  
  
“I’m glad that you took up the challenge. I never thought that our weekend getaways can be like this,” Chris says, wrapping his hand around Matt’s and giving it a good squeeze as he smiles warmly at him.  
  
Matt smiles back.  
  
“After all we’ve been through, I’m glad I took it as well.”  
  
“So after we take a picture of the bridges, that’s the challenge of the riddles being completed then.”  
  
“Yep, and that means I get a nice bottle of bordeaux and I get to send Corvo packing off to somewhere of my picking.”  
  
“Do you have an idea of where you’re going to send Corvo off to?”  
  
“Don’t worry, I have the perfect places to send him off to for my riddle.”  
  
“Places?” Chris asks, raising an eyebrow.  
  
Matt gives an evil smirk, saying nothing else. He has been planning for this since the third riddle and knows the perfect places that comes to mind.  
  
\-----  
  
 _On the earth that we walk, there are two ends of the world that pushes the limits of explorers. Two ends of the world where the sun never sets nor rises._  
  
From the Amundsen–Scott South Pole Station, an airplane is making its landing nearby the station on relatively flat ground.   
  
The airplane moves closer to the station before it finally stops in its tracks and the pilots turn off its turboprop engines, and a number of passengers disembark from the airplane. One of them is a certain brown and green-eyed Japanese singer.  
  
He takes his time to stare at the horizon and at the large American-owned South Pole station before turning his attention to the monument pole with a silvery sphere attached to its top and the flag poles featuring several different nations that have laid their stakes on the frozen continent.   
  
Corvo can’t help but grin and let out a chuckle.  
  
It was an easy riddle to figure out to which he has done the first half of it, but of course once Corvo figured out the two locations that Matt wants him to go to, it is an expensive one to fulfill.   
  
And also a time consuming one to boot, considering that he has to wait for the right season to come before he can go to the Arctic where the ice is still thick enough to stand on the North Pole. And  _then_  he has to wait for the summer that comes at the Southern Hemisphere at around the end of the year to go to Antarctica.  
  
It makes Corvo wonder if it was worth the price of doing this, as it now makes the bottle of Pétrus bordeaux that he rewarded to Matt seem like a drop of water to the sea in how much he had spent to accomplish this particular journey. Tourism to the North and South Poles is scarce, and thus makes it expensive to even bother going to these places.  
  
Then again, he did get Matt and Chris to go to five different places just to find the monuments and statues that they rarely bother to look up on as potential places to visit, so the riddle he gets in return is basically a free-for-all for Matt to duly take advantage of. Additionally, if he doesn’t do it -even if he has pragmatic reasons behind deciding to back off from doing it- it would have been not fun to be made fun of the fact that he couldn’t even do one single game of his own doing.  
  
Still, Corvo is impressed that Matt had created a riddle specifically having him go to two locations at two different ends of the planet rather than a single location and left a decent dent to his savings.  
  
He looks on at the vast whiteness, with dark rocks peeking out of the snow and ice here and there. Looking at the pale beauty and knowing that he’s at a place that he had long wanted to go as a kid, he isn’t going to complain about it. His boyfriend isn’t complaining as well in these trips, since it’s not everyday that one plans for a trip to the extreme ends of the world.   
  
“How are you finding the view? Beautiful, isn’t it?” Corvo asks his boyfriend.  
  
“I’m freezing from the cold right now to appreciate it.”  
  
Well, the only exception may be the cold weather.  
  
After all, it’s very rarely that you hear of someone willing to visit both the North and South Pole. Though saying that he’s been to both the Arctic and Antarctica does give a nice ring to the list of things that he has done as an ice breaker in parties, not to mention the bragging rights.  
  
Besides, after spending their week in the Antarctic, he and his boyfriend are going to get on a plane bound for New Zealand and stay there for a week, one of their favourite places to go for holidays.  
  
“This is fancier than when we went to the North Pole,” his boyfriend says.  
  
“And we’re on solid ground for once,” Corvo says. “Although we’re at the ceremonial south pole rather than the geographical one. Although that keeps shifting around every year. So it’s kind of pointless to search for the current one.”  
  
“So the ceremonial one should do then,” his boyfriend says. “Should we take it with or without the flags?”  
  
“Better have it with the flags. It’ll look better in the pictures.”  
  
If he gets Matt interested in playing this game again, he’s certainly going to make it a tad bit more difficult  _and_  expensive to cover for his friend.


End file.
